Author: Stephen R. Welch

Stephen R. Welch is a freelance writer based in New York. He writes regularly for Free Inquiry; his last article “The Importance of Being Blasphemous: Literature, Self-Censorship, and the Legacy of The Satanic Verses,” appeared in the October/November 2015 issue.

Under Tiberius, by Nick Tosches (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2015, ISBN 978-0316405669). 336 pp. Hardcover, $26.00. As Under Tiberius draws to a close, its narrator, Gaius Fulvius Falconius, knows he is dying. Bedridden and in pain, Falconius holds no hope for an afterlife. And though he sees the world that he is about to …

For those on the left of India’s political spectrum, “secularism” is a rhetorical icon, righteously wielded much as “social justice” or “workers’ rights” is elsewhere. But for those on the political Right, including a great many among India’s majority Hindu community, it is nothing more than a euphemism for reverse discrimination. To these Indians, secularism …